I recently had occasion to visit a German newspaper site and was disappointed and annoyed that I was blocked from reading the articles! The reason being that I have an ad-blocker installed. However if I were so desperate to read this particular newspaper they would let me if I signed up for a subscription at a cost of €19.99 per year. For this very reasonable price, I would get the paper up to twice as fast and with up to 90% less ads. Is this extortion or sound commercial sense? The paper has to make money somehow and not everyone has an ad-blocker; have they tried charging the merchants double for delivering their ads? Somehow getting my debit card out and stumping up the money would leave me feeling slightly “poorly”. I would rather go to the news-stand and pay for a “real” paper which you can feel and which stays where you put it and slowly turns yellow over the ages – and the ads don’t blink, flash or give you an epileptic fit! The site in question is “BILD.de”.

Giant amphitheatre built in Rome under the Flavian emperors. Construction of the Colosseum was begun sometime between AD 70 and 72 during the reign of Vespasian; the structure was officially dedicated in AD 80 by Titus in a ceremony that included 100 days of games. Later, in AD 82, Domitian completed the work by adding the uppermost story. Unlike earlier amphitheatres, which were nearly all dug into convenient hillsides for extra support, the Colosseum is a freestanding structure of stone and concrete, measuring 620 by 513 feet (190 by 155 metres) overall. Three of the arena’s stories are encircled by arcades framed by decorative half-columns in the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders; the structure’s rising arrangement of columns became the basis of the Renaissance codification known as the assemblage of orders.

The amphitheatre seated some 50,000 spectators. It was the scene of thousands of hand-to-hand combats between gladiators, of contests between men and animals, and of many larger combats, including mock naval engagements. However, it is uncertain whether the arena was the site of the martyrdom of early Christians.

The Colosseum was damaged by lightning and earthquakes in medieval times and, even more severely, by vandalism; all the marble seats and decorative materials disappeared. A restoration project was undertaken in the 1990s. Changing exhibitions relating to the culture of ancient Rome are regularly mounted.